Volscalkur's Sketchbook

Hi all,
Thanks for stopping by my humble sketch book!
I've been lurking around here on conceptArt for a while now admiring all the awesome art! I'm just now getting around to putting up some of my own (much less awesome) art. I find myself leaning towards sci-fi/fantasy type stuff most of the time. Someday I would like to be a concept artist/illustrator but to get to that point I really need to draw more, and work on quite a few things!

One of my teachers once said : "Every artist has thousands of crappy drawings that they need to get out of their system before they can start doing good drawings!"

Well this is my journey towards getting the crappy ones out!

I am arranging my older work according to topic and approximate date that I did them, I' like to think I have gradually progressed and gotten better since the first pieces!

Comments and Criticism welcome on any and all of my work anywhere!The only way we can get better is if we know what we need to fix!

Just realized that this is going to take a very long time if I limit myself to one piece per post LOL so here are a few more, concepts for a post apocalyptic, bio hazardous flame thrower wielding soldier of some kind, once again done for work.

Here are a few dendroid-type creatures, one humanoid and the other more draconian-est? I really like the mobile, intelligent plant idea... very fascinating! Definitely like to do more of that type stuff
The first one is from waaaay back in the day when I was in high school.

Here are a few concepts for a game I worked on while I was in school... a Viking's verses Romans game! Each side had a squad made up of a general, as well as a ranged character, and a large tank/bruit character. The character in the Thracian gladiator helmet has a very cool weapon that actually existed in reality! It was a primitive flame thrower that was rebuilt on a history channel special I saw!
I also did a few vehicle and environment sketches.

Attached Images

Last edited by volscalkur; June 14th, 2009 at 02:58 PM.
Reason: added a few more

I really like doing vehicles and sci-fi stuff. But for some reason I don't really have a lot of that sort of thing in my sketch book? Most of these are quite old and were done as assignments while I was in school.

Coloring and finishing has always been hard for me. I've screwed up many drawings that I was happy with at the sketch stage by coloring them and having them turn out horrible!
But practice is the only sure way to get better!

Not much of a sequential art kinda guy, but here are a few comic pages I did in school. The first page was a redesign project where we had to take an existing comic page and redo it in a different style. I choose a Hellboy comic!
The second two are my own idea for an assignment where we had to make a storyboard for a movie about something transforming into somethign else. In mine an Egyptian mummy turns into an Anubis-like character.

This was the product of an awesome school assignment- we worked in a team and one person was the artist and the other the director then we switched. The artist was to bring the ideas of the director to life one paper. The person i was partnered with told me make something with 4eyes, tentacles, hooves and spikes everywhere!

Ghost rider and Thor are two of my favorite comic characters so i did a quick sketch of them together in a team up suggested by my roommate! didn't turnout as good as i hoped.

I guess sometimes you draw things out of pure whimsy?
Didn't really have a direction in mind when I started sketching the demon with the sunglasses while listening to some Ozzy?

I really like the last one! Some day (soon!) I'm gonna stop being lazy and get this one colored! Kind of a Pitlord type creature inspired by an old Heroes of Might and Magic game I played way back!
Note the tiny human corpses hanging from his belt!

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Last edited by volscalkur; June 14th, 2009 at 04:48 PM.
Reason: spelling

This was the start of my idea for COW#143 -Arctic Juggernaut of Death!
Unfortunately I got busy that week and didn't have time to finish it.

This is a massive prehistoric creature that used to prey on herds of mammoths walking across the ice of the frozen arctic. It lurked beneath the ice until it could hear the sound of the herd above then it would smash up through the ice with the large horns on it's head and back and swallowed as many of the unfortunate mammoths as it could before the quicker land animals could get away. Most scientists agree that this creature has long been extinct... how ever recent events imply otherwise!

The PsyLatoric Sucker measures an average of 5 meters in length and weighs around 225 kilos. It spends most of its time lurking on the bottom of the verdant swampy rivers of the PsyLatoric region where it makes its home. Well disguised by the murky waters and dense foliage it lies in wait for a suitable (i.e. living) creature to come within range of it's psychic energy draining pulses. Once hit with a rapid succession of these pulses the prey becomes dazed and disoriented. When the victim gets close enough the sucker rapidly pumps water through its heart-like outer body creating a massive vortex which sucks the hapless creature down to the Suckers gaping maw. The Sucker also has 5 tentacle mouths which it uses to drain it's prey of blood before crushing and digesting it with it's main set of mouths.

I really enjoyed doing this and the topic lot of fun!
Here it is from concepts to final!

This is my next COW #145 the Comical Chimera!
I did a cross between a giraffe, a penguin and an octopus.
I worked quite hard on this but it still turned out quite sloppy and I got cut from the poll and rightly so! I notice more and more things that I need to fix each time I look at him. I need to go back and rework him!

I was quite proud of the story though!:

Fezzelbottom's Flatulent Gir-octa-guin was a rather unfortunate product of the unmonitored "Genetic Hobbyist" era that
followed the forth world war where anyone with $500 and a penchant for do-it-your-self genetic engineering could buy
everything they needed to build a backyard genetics lab from post war arms dealers.
Their creator was a mild mannered accountant named Bob Fezzelbottom who was trying to create the perfect pet for
his spoiled little daughter by combining her three favorite animals: Giraffes, octopuses and penguins.

Once the experiments were complete and the proud dad presented his daughter with a box full of tiny fuzzy ger-octa-guins it became apparent that something in their internal workings had gone terribly wrong!The massive ruminant digestive system of the giraffe part was much to large for the other parts that made up the tiny creatures, and the subsequent rapid build up of digestive gases proved to have a rather explosive effect on their digestion. Soon after their first meal the newly hatched ger-ota-guins were blasting all over the house like so many punctured balloons. The rude noises and smells offended the spoiled little princess who demanded her father get ride of the obnoxious (not to mention noxious)little creatures immediately! The cowardly father did what all cowardly parents do with toys that don't quite work out right: threw them in the dumpster and hoped for the problem to go away.

Unfortunately for the embarrassed father the ger-octa-guins did not go away, instead they developed a taste for garbage at the city dump where they ended up- learned to control their flatulent explosions to fly short distances and begin to adapt to their new urban habitat so much so that eventually they begin to reproduce and have since become somewhat of a nuisance in cities across the world.

I think your PsyLatoric Sucker is your strongest piece so far. It feels the most finished although I am not that sure about the green background.
Your Fezzelbottom's Flatulent Gir-Octa-Guin is coming around nicely too. The edges need to be sharpened in some places (it looks like he is a little out of focus). It is a cool design and his expression and head detail are especially nice.

This was a bit of a turning point in my art in a way thanks to some amazingly helpful tutorials posted this week!
I tried a few new things this week that I had not tried up to this point- First I started from scratch in photoshop, up until now I had been drawing out my line work on paper, scanning it in, and then coloring it in PS.
Second I tried working in gray scale to define the forms as well as the light and shadows before laying down color- instead of jumping in and trying to color and shad all at once like I had been attempting.
I was quite happy with how this turned out, I've got a long way to go, but at least I'm getting there!

Here is my description for this creature:

The Mantlearis Kerasark is a very unique species indeed. Native to the fiery volcanic regions at the poles of Mantlearis VI these creatures not only survive temperatures that would incinerate most other life forms, but thrive in this harsh unforgiving landscape. Feeding almost entirely on the large deposits of high temperature bacteria and raw minerals available in the deep lava beds at the heart of most volcanoes in the region they often times wade into the lava until nearly submerged. This causes their tusks and the protruding exoskeleton that covers their heads and runs down their backs to become super heated and glow brightly while giving off sparks and flames as they emerge from the lava. Due to the scarcity of their food sources the Kerasark are fiercely territorial and will charge any creature that dares to venture into their domain. The last thing an unwary adventurer will see before the Kerasark gore and trample his smoldering body into ash will be a massive creature of flame and shadows!